Effectiveness of Dietary Supplements in Increasing Hatchability of Eggs and Viability of Progeny of Hens Fed a Diet Containing a High Level of Soybean Oil Meal

Abstract

WHITSON et al. (1946a) showed that if hens were fed a diet consisting largely of corn and soybean oil meal with small quantities of alfalfa leaf meal and other mineral and vitamin supplements, the hatchability decreased as the level of soybean oil meal increased from 0 to 40 percent in increments of 10 percent. This occurred in spite of apparently adequate quantities of the dietary factors known to affect hatchability. Whitson et al. (1946b) also showed that inclusion of 8 percent of dried cow manure in a diet containing 30 percent of soybean oil meal effected a considerable improvement in hatchability. It seemed desirable to determine whether or not this property of cow manure is shared by other and more widely used feedstuffs and if possible to obtain some knowledge of the distribution of the factor responsible for the increased hatchability in order to facilitate attempts to determine its identity. . . .